Sunday, August 17, 2003
Christopher Howse (in writing about low culture v no culture) invites you to:
"Imagine your head is made of timber. Well, every time you read a daft story in a tabloid about a silly celebrity it is as if a termite has been transferred into your xylomorphic noddle. By the end of a year, your brain will be nothing but a crumbly galleried shell.
"This is absolutely scientific. Our Technology Correspondent reported last week that some academic psychiatrists at Southern Illinois University have alarming data on Celebrity Worship Syndrome, which leads to depression, anxiety, social dysfunction and psychosis [report, Aug 14]."
Apparently, Celebrity Worship has reached such massive proportions, manifestations are now regarded professionally as a syndrome of some kind or the constellation of such symptoms present as a form of disease. One person made an early self-diagnosis:
Mad Icon Disease
Others are inclined even momentarily to take a more philosophical spin on "Living in a fantasy world":
"Most of us have been accused at one time or another of "living in a fantasy world." The funny thing about such an accusation is that it's perfectly true, but not in the way that our accusers generally mean it. Because most of us are inhabiting worlds generated not by our own fantasies, but are instead ensnared in a tangled web of fantasy spun out of the minds of everyone around us. Unfortunately, due to the economic circumstances of the corporeal world, so many of our fantasies are mutually exclusive that most of us can only imagine what it would be like to live in a world where our fantasies are encouraged to come true. "
¶ 8/17/2003 05:23:00 PM
"Imagine your head is made of timber. Well, every time you read a daft story in a tabloid about a silly celebrity it is as if a termite has been transferred into your xylomorphic noddle. By the end of a year, your brain will be nothing but a crumbly galleried shell.
"This is absolutely scientific. Our Technology Correspondent reported last week that some academic psychiatrists at Southern Illinois University have alarming data on Celebrity Worship Syndrome, which leads to depression, anxiety, social dysfunction and psychosis [report, Aug 14]."
Apparently, Celebrity Worship has reached such massive proportions, manifestations are now regarded professionally as a syndrome of some kind or the constellation of such symptoms present as a form of disease. One person made an early self-diagnosis:
Mad Icon Disease
Others are inclined even momentarily to take a more philosophical spin on "Living in a fantasy world":
"Most of us have been accused at one time or another of "living in a fantasy world." The funny thing about such an accusation is that it's perfectly true, but not in the way that our accusers generally mean it. Because most of us are inhabiting worlds generated not by our own fantasies, but are instead ensnared in a tangled web of fantasy spun out of the minds of everyone around us. Unfortunately, due to the economic circumstances of the corporeal world, so many of our fantasies are mutually exclusive that most of us can only imagine what it would be like to live in a world where our fantasies are encouraged to come true. "
¶ 8/17/2003 05:23:00 PM
